Protection orders fail to stop repeat domestic violence in Lithuania

Two men killed their partners in Lithuania within one week, including one case in which the victim had been issued a protection order, LRT reported. The deaths have renewed debate over gaps in the country’s system for protecting people from domestic violence.

More than 10,000 protection orders are issued in Lithuania each year, but over 40 percent are violated. The number of repeat orders is also increasing. Last year, nine people received six repeat orders each.

Gabrielė, a designer who runs her own studio, had to rebuild her life after fleeing an abusive husband. She said he tried to kill her in front of their child by strangling her twice during one evening.

After her husband became violent, Gabrielė contacted the authorities. A pre-trial investigation was opened and a preventive measure barring him from approaching her was imposed. She said, however, that he continued to stalk her and that she eventually had to move to another city.

“The response to the termination of the pre-trial investigation was that it was unintentional violence. So what kind of protection and safety are we talking about?” Gabrielė said.

Dovilė Masalskienė, programme manager at the Women’s Information Centre, said the current system lacked an effective response to repeated violations. Violating an order can result in a fine under the Code of Administrative Offences, but further measures cannot be imposed if a person refuses to take part in a programme to change violent behaviour, she said.

Politicians are considering extending protection orders beyond their current 15-day duration, potentially to two or three months, and introducing stricter penalties for violations.

“The first 15 days most likely do not help, because the responsibility for failing to comply with them is, to put it mildly, laughable,” said Modesta Petrauskaitė, a member of the Social Democratic Party parliamentary group. She said the fines range from 80 to 300 euros and that, for a first offence, the offender can pay half the amount.

Jūratė Juškaitė, head of the Human Rights Centre, said femicide, defined as the killing of a woman because of her gender and most often committed by a current or former intimate partner, should be regulated in a separate article of the Criminal Code.

Such provisions already apply in Italy, Cyprus, Malta and Croatia, she said. Another option would be to treat a gender-motivated killing in a domestic setting as an aggravating circumstance, as in France, Spain and Portugal.

Interior Minister Martynas Katelynas said the ministry currently saw no need for new Criminal Code provisions. Instead, he said, oversight and the effectiveness of existing measures should be strengthened because new articles in the code would not fundamentally change people’s behaviour.

Edita Rudelienė, a member of the Liberal Movement parliamentary group, said measures should be tightened and that the introduction of femicide into law deserved discussion. She said it would help identify such cases and collect additional data, rather than constitute a privilege for women.

Lithuania ranks second in the European Union for cases of women being killed in domestic settings.